Interview with Noam Chomsky

Resumo

A voice all but ignored by the mass media in the United States, in an ant-like effort of persistence, Noam Chomsky devotes two days every week to political militancy, even if his words barely make a ripple. During my stay as visiting researcher/professor at New York University, not too far from Chomsky’s office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston, I decided, very much the dilettante, to e-mail him requesting an interview for the Revista de Estudos Políticos. His e-mail was easily attainable through the faculty listing on the MIT website. “Why not give it a shot?” I thought. In my recent experience as the editor of the REP I have adopted a spirit of unabashed prodding and insistence, and learned to temper it by keeping expectations modest as a preemptive antidote for frustration. I have also learned to cope with a collection of answers in the negative as well as forgotten promises (not a few of them!). However, interspersed here and there, some have come in the positive and are not less celebrated. Chomsky’s personal reply, less than twenty-four hours later, therefore came as a complete and welcome surprise.